Scripture is a very special form of writing, a letter from faith
groups in the past to us in the future. One person wrote down ideas
or stories important to him or her in terms of their relationship to God,
and that very act of writing showed that what was written is important,
worth keeping and sharing. A group of the faithful considered that
text to be something to remember and cherish, something to support and
guide them, and they passed it on to other faith communities in space and
time.

And so this text of Isaiah comes to us, here chosen by the Church
as a significant word for us to contemplate as we begin Lent. So
how can we understand it? Do we ourselves actually quarrel and fight,
"striking with wicked claw" and all the rest? I think that Isaiah's
accusation touches few of us personally and deeply as we read it, but if
we look instead at what he calls us to do in the place of such behavior
we might better grasp what he is getting at: untying the thongs of the
yoke, setting free the oppressed, etc.

We are immensely rich people, even if we have nothing in the bank:
we have our God, our faith, our time, our attention, and our thoughtful
caring. All of us have people whom we live with, people whom we work
with, people we come in contact with regularly, but how well do we know
them? How truly do we share our wealth and our selves with them?
How often do we invite them to share their pains with us, their loneliness,
their cares? Just knowing that we care enough to ask and to listen,
to remember what they have revealed to us of their private selves, is often
enough to ease their sense of abandonment, to release them from their prisons
if even for a moment.

Our greatest wealth is our knowledge of God and his love for us;
our greatest fasting, the one I think the Lord wishes, is our breaking
open the prisons of silence we too often force those around us to live
in, is our proclaiming the love of God with our own care for our brothers
and sisters.